The Flying Train - AMAZING (1902) German Video and Technology!

That's a spectacular blending of art and engineering--those supports are gorgeous. Thanks for sharing.

It's amazing how rural some of the areas looked back then. Now it's all one big city from beginning to end. The Wupper valley is very narrow, so the 'Schwebebahn' ('hovering train') was conceived to mitigate space use and congestion. It works.

Supposedly the elephant was not hurt (it was indeed a circus stunt), and a yogurt brand, 'Tuffi', was named after the elephant.

Pina Bausch is indeed from there, as is Else Lasker-Schueler (author of 'Die Wupper'), Peter Broetzmann, Bayer and Hoffmann (of Bayer chemicals and Aspirin fame), and of course Friedrich Engels (who would take our watches away and put an end to this nonsense).

Found this to go with @Tony C. ’s original:

Seattle has a monorail, in which the train is above the tracks on its rail. Getting the passengers out in the event of a problem can indeed be an issue. Plan A is to being a train on the other track alongside it and stretch a plank and handrails between the trains. Plan B is to get the fire department to bring a ladder truck to the street below. The monorail goes over streets and isn't exactly an asset to the street below, but it does get passengers efficiently from one end of the rather short monorail track to the other.

This one is fun. Early San Francisco from a cable car.

That was great! Nice to see SF from shortly before the 1906 earthquake. SF should never have taken out the Market Street cable car line.